Well, it’s Friday and so I’m guessing you may well be expecting a column on Judge Kavanaugh. And I think there are very important things to be said about this important nomination. But I’m not going to be the one to say them (Ed: yay!). Instead, I’m giving you a break from that Washington nightmare and instead I want to talk about an entirely different problem – radiation standards at the EPA, teachers, and the Nobel Prize in Physics. See how it all comes together? Not so much? (Ed: nope)

Let me explain.

There were three separate news stories reported this week that got me thinking. The first was the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prizes in physics. The trio of scientists that won this year’s honor worked on lasers in amazing ways that might one day help save your life. The trio included the oldest Nobel recipient at age 96, and the first woman to win the award in 55 years. Impressive stuff to be sure. The second story that caught my eye was the Colorado Politics story noting that this year’s election sees record numbers of teachers running for office across the nation. The final story, in the Gazette, reported on the EPA’s effort to ease radiation exposure limits for Americans. The Trump administration is using, the article reports, theories that were “dismissed by the great bulk of scientists.”

Which brings me to my main point today, are you ready? It’s pretty bold – Education is Good.

Which is why I am troubled by the Right’s ongoing battle against what they call elites, who are, very often, educated folks. Indeed, while the fake “war on Christmas” gets attention every year, very little attention is paid to the efforts – not only of the Trump Administration, but of many GOPers nationwide – to diminish the perceived value of higher education.

Back when I was teaching political science at the Air Force Academy I routinely irritated my students by offering actual facts, such as the fact that one of the major outcomes of higher education – across the body of all students – is a distinct turn toward a more liberal perspective. Now my liberal friends argue that this is due to students becoming better informed and that this increase in understanding of the world leads naturally to a more liberal point of view. My conservative friends argue that the “liberalization effect” is not due to pesky things called facts but is because colleges and universities are filled with liberals, who brainwash their students. Your own political bias can help you decide who is right and who is wrong, but the fact remains that education makes you more liberal. So perhaps it isn’t surprising, though I find it troubling, that a Pew survey last year reported that a solid majority – 58 percent – of Republicans think that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country.

Thus, the story on the EPA is either a celebration of common sense or an anti-science attack on elite scientists who claim that radiation is bad. The thing is, radiation is bad. Mr. Trump’s EPA even argued that loosening the radiation standards that help protect nuclear workers, oil and gas drillers, medical workers and more, the EPA was actually helping, because a little bit of radiation is good for you, like a bit of sunlight or exercise.

This is far from the only rollback of environmental standards Mr. Trump’s EPA has been engineering. They’ve made it legal to dump coal ash in streams again and has raised how much pollution powerplants can pump out of their smokestacks. They are also working to rescind the Clean Water Rule that prohibits industries from dumping waste – toxic and other – into streams and wetlands. Afterall, what have streams and wetlands done for me lately?

I’ve previously written on the dangers of anti-elitism, and how you probably do want an elite plumber or heart surgeon. And in the same edition of a single newspaper, we see a celebration of the power of scientific research by the new Nobel laureates, while also seeing an attempt by the EPA to make additional radiation exposure just another little perk for many Americans. I hope the third story, about teachers running for office in record numbers, is the most important of the three. I hope we can find a time, perhaps in a post-Trump era, when education is again celebrated, teachers are respected, and actual science dominates scientific decision-making. Fingers crossed.